tree about unhappiness with FI

[Anne B]

I made a tree about a complicated problem I have with being unhappy with FI:

https://imgur.com/FXkYclM

It was easier to make the tree than I thought. I thought it would be too hard to organize things. It’s still not as well organized as it could be. I may make further changes to it.

If you have answers or possible answers to any of my nodes, please feel free to answer here. Or maybe I’ll use the tree to ask separate questions for the nodes I especially want feedback on.

[Elliot Temple]

the organization seems OK IMO.

FYI you’ll get more replies if ppl can quote nodes without typing them in. e.g. PDF export or markdown+png dual export.

Elliot Temple
www.fallibleideas.com

[Anne B]

How do I share a pdf? Iimgur won’t take it.

I’ll try to figure out Markdown.

Here's plain text. I’ll see how it comes through.




Unhappiness with FI
I beat myself up for not doing better
I think this is bad because it makes me unhappy
I think this is good because it encourages me to try harder
Strong negative feelings that come around sometimes and then go
Ignoring them hasn’t helped
Mentioning them hasn’t helped
What might help that I haven’t tried yet?
Maybe I really don’t want to make progress at FI even though I think I do
Do I post too much?
Are people annoyed at too many of my posts?
Are my posts low quality?
I don’t know how to pick FI projects
Overwhelmed by gap between expectations and reality
When I didn’t know about FI I didn’t know how much I suck at everything
Possible to go back to that?
If yes, how?
Convince myself that FI people are crackpots
I currently don’t think this is true
Convince myself that FI people are jerks so they must be wrong about everything
I currently don’t think this is true
Convince myself I’m too stupid for FI
I currently don’t think this is true
Drugs and/or alcohol
Distraction with something else that keeps me busy
If no, I’m stuck.
Well maybe it’s not really stuck if I’m okay with sucking at everything
FI isn’t fun for me, whether or not it’s going well
Nothing else is particularly fun either
So I should do things that are important to me, even if they’re not fun. It beats doing nothing.
FI a waste of my time?
What would I do instead?
Time with family and friends
Learn something without caring about doing it super well
Pass the time pleasantly
Do things for other people
Volunteer work
Help family
Make money
Have a career
Slow progress
At this rate, not much learned by the time I die
How to know how much progress I’ve made
Could be pretty much zero
Could be more than I think
Anyone else here making good progress?
Or are they just good because they started out good?
Is it because they never acquired the bad blocks I have? Or did they successfully get around some of the same blocks?
What can I learn from how they do things?
Maybe I should just accept slow progress.
Disappointment that I don’t have exponential learning growth
Exponential doesn’t necessarily mean fast.
What would accepting that look like?
Would that mean giving up on faster progress?
I thought my hard work would pay off more than this.
Maybe it will if I keep trying different approaches
If I haven’t figured out better ways to learn by now maybe I never will.
I’m doing my best to figure out good ways to learn but it’s not good enough
Maybe something someone has already suggested will help
I don’t have a good list of things I have and haven’t tried
I could start a tree of this now
Maybe something I try in the future will be good
Maybe it won’t.
I was successful at learning grammar
Yes, but at that rate of learning I’ll learn very little over the course of my life
Maybe spend less time on FI
That might slow me down even more
Or it might make it less stressful

[Anne B]

Specifically about this part: Is anyone else here happy with the progress you are making in either thinking better or learning better? If so, I want to know what methods you are using. Maybe that will be helpful to me.

(left the rest for context)

[Anne B]

Specifically, I wonder if people like Freeze and TheRat are making progress by doing things like reading a lot (without posting to FI or curi blog much about what they read), chatting a lot in Discord, chatting a lot elsewhere. Maybe I should be doing more of that kind of thing rather than trying to do organized projects. Maybe then I’d enjoy it more too.

[Elliot Temple]

Discord:

[1:46 PM]curi: @AnneB unless you actually pay for advice, i have zero responsibility for any choice you make. it's up to you. anything i say (or anyone else) is simply an idea for you to evaluate and use (or not) as you see fit. this is how FI works. your role is to engage – read, post stuff, take advice, etc. – in a way that benefits you. other ppl's role is to make sure they do that for themselves. everyone looks out for their own interests.
[1:51 PM]curi: i think you've been told this before
[1:52 PM]curi: there's something weird about the problem allegedly being second-handed attempts to act on the opinions of others, pander, etc., but actually you don't listen to me.
[1:53 PM]curi: you don't make a very robust effort to find out my actual opinions and follow those. i think you act on some internalized, generic sense of what other people think or want, which you customized in a few ways related to me.

I also posted:

https://curi.us/2216-fi-posting-tips#14798

> When you participate at FI or curi, other people have no responsibility for any choice you make. It's up to you. Make your own decisions. Anything I say (or anyone else says) is simply an idea for you to evaluate and use (or not) as you see fit. Your role is to engage – read, post stuff, take advice, etc. – in a way that benefits you. Other ppl's role is to do that for themselves. Everyone looks out for their own interests. If everyone does this, then people only interact when there is mutual benefit. This is basically the same as how economic freedom and trade work and how each person pursuing their "selfish" interest causes every trade that happens to be win/win.


Elliot Temple
www.curi.us

[Anne B]

On Dec 11, 2019, at 5:00 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:

> Discord:
>
> [1:46 PM]curi: @AnneB unless you actually pay for advice, i have zero responsibility for any choice you make. it's up to you. anything i say (or anyone else) is simply an idea for you to evaluate and use (or not) as you see fit. this is how FI works. your role is to engage – read, post stuff, take advice, etc. – in a way that benefits you. other ppl's role is to make sure they do that for themselves. everyone looks out for their own interests.
> [1:51 PM]curi: i think you've been told this before
> [1:52 PM]curi: there's something weird about the problem allegedly being second-handed attempts to act on the opinions of others, pander, etc., but actually you don't listen to me.
> [1:53 PM]curi: you don't make a very robust effort to find out my actual opinions and follow those. i think you act on some internalized, generic sense of what other people think or want, which you customized in a few ways related to me.

This could be correct. I do have a generalized sense of things like *what other people think I should be doing* and *what a good student should do* and *how to be a good group member* and *how to get people to like me*. I project those generalized ideas onto you and onto the other people here.

It could also be true (both could be true or just one could be true) that I don't make a very robust effort to find out your actual opinions and follow them because of general problems with interpreting what people write and with improving my understanding of things. I don’t think I’ve made less of an effort at learning your opinions than at learning lots of other things that I’d like to know.